You would think, that burning Sage, and Incense, would yield a good amount of smoke. It doesn't. After wasting about 4 cones of incense, 1/2 a bunch of Sage, and 20 matches, I finally got this image.
Light source includes natural light from the window behind it.
PS Edits include Desaturation, Levels, and Sharpening filter, as well as some cropping
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Place: 80 out of 99 Avg (all users): 4.8333 Avg (commenters): 5.5000 Avg (participants): 4.7258 Avg (non-participants): 4.8846 Views since voting: 816 Views during voting: 334 Votes: 192 Comments: 6 Favorites: 0
Thank you for your wonderful critique. I appreciate it. It was extremely helpful. I was wondering why it didn't do as well as I thought it would, and now I have my answer.
From the critique club:
First: this is a very good composition but because of the effect it falls into the abstract class. The how of this remains a mystery. The looker searches to no avail. Forgetting the smoke challenge, the image is strong. bring it into the challenge and it suffers from the ambiguity of what else accompanies the smoke. It turns into a riddle, but the viewer is not able to discern the answer.
On the left I think I see a candle of about 4 or 5 inch width. yet this is wrong because the smoke appears to emanates before this. Then, the smoke itself. Again, it looks like some shield with a hole and a tear like highlighted bottom, where the smoke is entering or is it exiting?
This is only my reflection. Others will have other issues. So again, you have a very artistic, abstract image in a challenge where the viewer wants to see smoke in its many ramifications, and they will allow smke to be abstract and dominate, but they will hold your feet to the fire because the other components instead of adding mystery added the unsolvable dilemma. If this were an abstract challenge, your mark would be ever so higher. Despite all this, I like it exactly as presented because it holds that hidden element.
I like this, though I wish you hadn't proveided such a mundane title for it. It has a feeling of landscape about it - which, in my opinion, is the secret of all near-figrative photography that isn't people-based. It reminds me of aurora shots, and in it's forms recalls the trumpets of Michelangelo's heralds. The composition is startlingly effective too. 9
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